


Bag Lady Moment

by b00mgh



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: 7.02, F/M, Hallucinations, Short, Supernatural - Freeform, totally random fic with no prompting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 00:11:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14092755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b00mgh/pseuds/b00mgh
Summary: Y'all know that one episode (7.02) of Supernatural where Sam is hallucinating all over the floor and Dean has to go pick him up and help him decipher what's real? Yeah, so I watched that last night and then there's a new episode of Timeless tonight and this is me shamelessly crossing over the two because I wanted to. It's not really my best work either, so there's that. Fuck it, here ya go.Or: Lucy is hallucinating after whatever Rittenhouse did to her, and the Time Team is trying to help.





	Bag Lady Moment

It’s been going on for about a week now. 

And, at first, it was small things: glancing to empty spaces, dazed looks, lack of focus.

But, on the last mission, it had been a full-on breakdown and Rufus had found Lucy literally stuffed under the sink when he and Wyatt got back from making sure Roosevelt had lived through the night. She had been mumbling at them to go away, but when she saw Rufus her eyes lit up and she threw her arms around his neck like he’d saved her life. She had cut her hand in her attempts to hide, and, in the absence of a doctor, Wyatt sewed it up. It looked like shit and would very likely scar.

When they got home, which was almost immediately after, the time team had a serious talk about Lucy’s hallucinations. She said that, at first, it had been small things: things that looked just a little wrong, people trying to get her attention, flashbacks. But, on this last mission, it had gotten worse– a lot worse. People that weren’t there were having conversations with her, telling her she was still with Rittenhouse and that everything she was seeing was a dream, telling her she’d never left, threatening her, hurting her, threatening her friends. 

Agent Christopher leaned in, narrowed her eyes, asked “You know they’re not real, don’t you?”

Lucy looked pleading, and guilty, “They say the same thing about you,” she answered.

Connor had a morbid fascination with this, but he was not trying anything with as short of a leash as he was on.

Jiya tried to be understanding– after all, her seizing hallucinations had only ended with the pills they’d given her a month ago– but she was also wary of any hallucination that could speak, that could hurt people.

Rufus still had the image of Lucy, shaking and mumbling under the sink in the bathroom of a 1900 hotel room, glued to the inside of his eyeballs, and he was struggling to accept that Lucy, dependable and fact-minded as she was, could ever have an issue discerning imagination from reality. He was trying to reconcile the cognitive dissonance, and stayed silent. 

Wyatt was upset, angry even. “Why didn’t you say something?” He demanded, not  _ loudly _ , but loud enough that Lucy flinched.

“I wasn’t trying to hide it,” she parried defensively, “I just wasn’t talking about it.”

“And that worked out so well.”

“I was–”

“If you say ‘fine’,” Rufus started solemnly, but he didn’t know how to finish that, so he went with “Don’t say you’re ‘fine’.” 

“I need a drink,” Connor sighed, and he wandered off down a hallway. 

Lucy could see Emma sitting in a chair she  _ knew  _ was unoccupied, and she was smirking, and she was saying “Oh, Princess, it’s cute you think any of this is real.”

“Is someone–” Jiya stuttered, “Is someone here  _ right now _ ?” Her hallucinations had only been places, things, and she’d been able to snap herself out of it if she tried, but Lucy was staring at the empty chair by the far computer like it was a person, and she was shaking a little. 

There was a slow, terrified, horribly guilty nod. “Emma.”

 

Everyone is trying to adjust to this, as it progresses, as it gets better and worse in waves over the course of a single day. Jiya is trying to avoiding Lucy. Agent Christopher is trying to keep everything running, and hardly has any time for this. Connor is sulking in his room about everything. Rufus is just trying to be there. Wyatt is trying not to be so angry. 

Lucy is trying to keep it away, tamp it down, ignore it. When Emma shows up in her room– which is sans one bunkmate since Jiya took to sharing with Rufus– with a rag and a bottle of water and a “how  _ will _ we pass the time, Princess?” Lucy screams at her, “Go away! Leave me alone!” It’s only afterward, when Emma shrugs and sits herself down on top of the dresser, that Lucy sees Rufus has been there the whole time.

“Having a bag lady moment?” he asks, and he’s trying to be a little funny. 

Lucy laughs bitterly, “Y-yeah, sorry.” 

Emma approaches Rufus from behind, and she’s got a knife. “Want some chips?” he asks, unperturbed by any of this, and Emma stabs him. The knife goes right through, and Lucy can see Rufus’s blood stain his shirt and drip to the floor.

“She stabbed you,” Lucy says flatly, her eyes are swimming with tears. She doesn’t know if Emma is fake or if everything is fake or if this has all been one drug-induced fever dream.

It takes Rufus a second to piece this together, but when he does he says “I’m still okay, Lucy. Are you going to want some chips though? Because I might finish the whole bag.”

Lucy tells him she will take some chips, and Emma scoffs and disappears. 

 

The big break happens when they’re all starting to think Lucy can get things under control. Rufus and Jiya are spending some quality time together– ‘coding.’ Agent Christopher has allowed Connor Mason some surface time, but only if she’s there to keep it (and him) under control. Wyatt is taking a shower.

Lucy is wandering the halls, trying to think of things she knows to be facts, trying to ascertain if these had been the same as the facts from yesterday, and she sees Wyatt and the first thing he does is grab her hand and tell her “This place has been compromised, we have to go  _ now _ .”

Lucy stutters, stumbles, tries to keep up. “What about Rufus? Jiya?”

“They’ve already been evacuated, you’re the last one out– it’s been a real pain in the ass trying to keep track of you lately.” They’re running through all sorts of hallways, alarms are blaring now. They’re reaching the exit, but there’s a man standing there, looking at her like she’s lost her mind.

And maybe she has, because Wyatt tells her “That guy’s bad, he’s Rittenhouse. Shoot him.” He hands her a gun.

“What? Wyatt why do I need to–”

“Are you really on our side?” Wyatt demands. “We need to know we can trust you. Kill him. I know you killed for Rittenhouse.” There’s an off-kilter growl in Wyatt’s voice, “Prove you’ll kill for us too.”

“Wyatt,  _ please _ –”

And that’s the first thing Wyatt hears when he steps out of the bathroom. He’s all dressed, he took his time because he had thought he  _ had _ time, but apparently not. He stalks silently through the hallway until he reaches the end, the room housing the power generator. Lucy is there, pointing a gun at the water heater in front of her, her eyes are darting all over the place and she looks like she’s going to cry.

“Luce,” Wyatt starts slowly, “Everything okay in here?” He wants to get the gun out of her hands– if she shoots the water heater, healing some stitches in her palm will be the least of her worries. 

“Wyatt?” Her voice is dazed, confused. She can see Wyatt on her left and in front of her. Her gun immediately moves to point at the one in front of her. “You’re not real. You’re  _ not real _ .”

“Woah, woah,  _ Lucy _ , calm down.” He’s taking slow, impossibly small, insidious steps toward her. 

“You told me, you  _ told  _ me we had to leave,” but she’s doubting herself now because the room looks different than it did when she came in, and the alarms turned off at some point, and she’s doubting they were ever on. 

“Lucy, I was in the shower,” Wyatt explains, “look, my hair’s still wet.” He’s got that smile on, the one that means that he’s nervous. 

“But,” Lucy breathes, “you’ve been,” and then Wyatt, the one next to her, fizzles. Fades into a familiar redheaded outline.

“Hey there, Princess. Having fun yet?”

Then the gun whips toward Emma, and Lucy pulls the trigger, several times. 

“Lucy!” Wyatt bellows, “This conversation does not require the discharge of a firearm!” 

She turns back to him, Emma is leering over his shoulder. Lucy isn’t sure how much of this she can take. 

“Drop the gun, Luce, you don’t need it,” Wyatt’s voice is softer now. “I’m not hurting you, and no hallucination is hurting you.” Lucy’s adrenaline wanes, and her hands shake, and the guns falls out of them. “Lucy, where is Emma? Right now?”

“She’s behind you, a little left.” Wyatt turns and literally walks right through the phantom. 

“Right there?” Lucy nods. Emma can’t maintain that she’s real when people can walk right through her. “Did you see that?” Wyatt asks. “Lucy, I am real. Rufus is real. Jiya and Agent Christopher and Connor Mason are real. Emma is not ever coming inside this base– she doesn’t know where it is, can’t find it. The Emma you’re seeing right now is not real. I can walk right through her– so can you.” He closes the distance between them, “Look,” and he puts a hand on her arm, “look, I am right here, Lucy, you can feel me right now, right?”

Lucy nods, and she grabs Wyatt into a hug because she would like to be fully and completely surrounded by something she knows is real. “Thank you, Wyatt.”

“Just returning the favor,” he whispers.

Rufus opens the door just then. “Hey, I heard yelling. Another bag lady moment? I’ve got more chips– Oh, got it, I’m going back to Jiya then.”


End file.
